President Trump announced his administration's blueprint for a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, which contains hopeful signs for Interstate 14 making its way through San Angelo.

"Our Nation’s infrastructure is in an unacceptable state of disrepair, which damages our country’s competitiveness and our citizens’ quality of life," read the opening lines of the 53-page "Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America." "For too long, lawmakers have invested in infrastructure inefficiently, ignored critical needs, and allowed it to deteriorate."

Four portions of the blueprint are exciting to the goals of San Angelo, said Larry Meyers, the Washington representative for the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway Coalition — the group working to expand the route of I-14.

Of the $1.5 trillion, most of the funding will come from local and state governments; however, over the next 10 years the federal government will provide $200 billion in funding to projects that can provide matching funds.

“Texas is in the better shape than many states as far as providing matching funds,” Meyers said.

Proposition 1 and Proposition 7, approved by Texas voters in 2014 and 2015, allocate portions of the state’s production tax — known as the severance tax in the oil and gas industry — and a portion of the general state tax into the transportation fund.

Between the two, nearly $3.5 billion goes into that transportation fund each year, said Gary Bushell, executive director of the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway Coalition

The funds are considered non-federal dollars that can match federal dollars, Bushell said, giving Texas an advantage over other states that will compete for the federal funds.

The second portion of the blueprint that could assist in the I-14 expansion is the money set aside for the Rural Infrastructure Program.

“This investment is needed to spur prosperous rural economies, facilitate freight movement, improve access to reliable and affordable transportation options and enhance health and safety for residents and businesses,” the blueprint reads. “Under this program, States would be incentivized to partner with local and private investments for completion and operation of rural infrastructure projects.”

This will be a big week for Infrastructure. After so stupidly spending $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is now time to start investing in OUR Country!

With rural areas defined as those with a population less than 50,000, Meyers said many of the areas between San Angelo and Midland would qualify.

The construction of I-14 “won’t be built as one project, but as a series of small projects,” he said, which will allow the different sections to fall into the rural category.

The bill's emphasis on improving rural areas helps the competitiveness of the coalition because it won’t need to worry as much about competing with larger cities with stronger political bases, Meyers said.

The third portion of the bill that Meyers think has potential to help fund I-14 is the Transformative Projects Program, described by the blueprint as providing assistance for “bold, innovative, and transformative infrastructure projects.”

The program would support projects that “are capable of generating revenue, would provide net public benefits, and would have a significant positive impact on the Nation, a region, State, or metropolitan area.”

“At first glance people think about hyper loops,” Meyers said. But the coalition plans to argue I-14 could be transformational because it opens the Permian Basin to the Port of Corpus Christi, the No. 1 port of export for crude oil.

“We are sending something that we have a surplus of and bringing money in,” he said, which “fits in with the Administration’s goals.”

Lastly, Meyers said, “the language is this proposal where it talks about streamlining the regulatory process is huge.”

The blueprint states that it will “shorten the process for approving projects to 2 years or less.”

This “translates into saving money and saving time,” Meyers said.

Meyers’ lobbying firm has also worked extensively on the construction of I-69, which included spending over $200 million on environmental studies that took 10-12 years, he said, explaining that it was because of the time federal and state departments were given to review the studies, often when it wasn’t a priority for them.

“Those kinds of restrictions are going to go away,” Meyers said, if what the blueprint outlines is approved by Congress.

As this point, the blueprint is simply a concept. Both the House and Senate will prepare legislation, with Trump calling on a bipartisan effort to craft it.

The biggest hurdle is developing a way to gather the $200 billion in infrastructure funding the blueprint calls for. Meyers and Bushell said some of the ideas being suggested include increasing the gas tax, leasing federal facilities to private companies or implementing a tax based on miles traveled when residents renew their vehicle’s tags each year.

It would probably require several funding sources, Meyers said.

The I-14 bill, known as the Babin-Conaway bill, should be introduced in two to three weeks.